The prices of many of the "parts" were already known on that day. Perhaps most notably wireless service. This would have allowed at least a ballpark estimate for what people would be willing to pay.

Point.-

PS. In a bit, like the weather? The further from the present you go, the "harder" it gets to solve for that?

That said, when approaching (or, surpassing) some "imposibility boundary" - for more an more parts to actually exist, ultimately leading to the whole being impossible ...

... that's when it gets interesting.-

I think that's true. If you described an early personal computer and its capabilities (including software) in 1970, sure, a lot of people would be "Why would I want that?" But both business people and individuals could probably give some reasonable approximation of what they'd be willing to pay.

The thing with something like a phone is that it's so dependent on several different network effects that it's hard to put a real value on it in isolation. Of course, for an individual device, there's very much an upper limit. I suspect that a lot of people in 1970 would balk at the price of an iPhone but then they had other telecoms charges that would seem extortionate today.

>I suspect that a lot of people in 1970 would balk at the price of an iPhone

And in 2024.

> charges that would seem extortionate today.

... per-minute voice, for example.-

In 1970, car phones were available. Reporters had them, as did police. The instrument was a familiar black, Bakelite phone hooked up to a radio.

Yeah, agreed, an iPhone or really most computers is a difficult comparison to make for this sort of thing. I mean, what is an iPhone anyway? It relies on a lot of infrastructure that wouldn’t be available in the 70’s: the modern internet, the apple App Store, usb chargers, a way to write and compile iOS programs and get it to run them, the first and third party programming ecosystem.

It seems like a nitpick but the value proposition of the thing is very dependent on the ability of all those, I’m sure we all have some intuition of which ought to be included, but it might not match.

An iPhone with all those things would probably be extremely valuable I guess. Thousands of times faster than the fastest supercomputer and a bit easier to carry.

The Blackberry was initially mostly of interest to "important people" whose organizations were paying for easier texting and email on the go. I did eventually get a Treo in 2006 on my own mostly because I was doing some travel on crutches and didn't want to carry a laptop. But the iPhone--especially by a few years post-2007 introduction--was really transformational for a lot of people in the mainstream. But, as you say, that was dependent on a lot of things that weren't inherent in the phone hardware.

Mobile communications for the most part was very much a premium early adopter phenomenon for people who really needed it in some form and/or didn't much care about the cost. Satellite was like that and is only now slowly changing.

Makes me wonder if we will not end up using AI for the most unexpected things too ...

> "Why would I want that?"

That question was asked and answered at the time. To store recipes on.

Once the PC arrived, though, the real drivers of sales were word processing and spreadsheets.

> answered at the time. To store recipes on.

Was this a thing? (Recipe storage being the "killer app" ...)

Ironically, storing recipes never caught on. It's just what people thought home computers would be useful for.

I see.-

You make an interesting distinction between perceived prospective use and actual use ...

I have a copy of an old humorous computer article in a book to the effect of things that people thought they'd want computers for and how they didn't really play out (given the tech at the time).

The popularity of cooking shows, especially cooking competitions/reality show hybrids seems to give some credence to that assumption.

The iPhone wasn't the first cell phone and wasn't the first smartphone either. One could assume that it would cost at least as much as a brand new Blackberry or Windows Mobile phone since not only was it Apple but it has features that no one else had at the time. Of course it still had to be affordable if Apple wanted it to sell well so people had some idea of what wouldn't be reasonable for what a smartphone should cost.